From Guru to God - the experience of ultimate truth.pdf

7/27/2019 From Guru to God - the experience of ultimate truth.pdf

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The Experience of Ultimate Truth

From Guru to God - the experience of ultimate truth Taken with author's permission from the "From Guru to God - The

Experience of Ultimate Truth"

by Michael Graham.

At around the age of sixteen, my brain woke up, and I started to reflect on life. All myfriends seemed to know what they wanted to do when they left high schoolgo back on

the farm, become a doctor, go into their dads business or whatever, but I didnt have

clue what my interests were or what career I wanted to follow.

Stuck with this limitation I began to read. My father was a doctor, a psychoanalyst and

something of a philosopher. Two books on the Eastern spiritual tradition, from the shelves of his

big library grabbed my attention; one on an Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and yoga, and the

other on Buddhism. They promised a life free of suffering, personal transformation and an

experience of the highest truth--Enlightenment. That was enough for me. Where do I sign?

After studying Yoga and trying to learn how to meditate in Melbourne Australia for three years, I

set off for India, the home of the mysteries of the East, the guru and every other marvelous

thing. I set out on a mission to find the truth and to be transformed.

So at age twenty-two, after motorcycling throughout Sri Lanka and India and taking a huge

round through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and on through Europe to London, I returned toIndia for the original purpose of my going there. I had come to spend time in the ashram or

abode, of Swami Muktananda Paramahansa. He was a guru, later to become famous in the

West. Hed come to me on strong recommendation as one whose mere touch or presence

could transform a persons life. As it turned out I was his first Australian devotee.

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Swami Muktananda Paramahansa

(Michael far right)

Muktananda in regal get up

on a special celebration day, 1969

Melbourne Airport, Nov 1970Muktananda & Michael arriving

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Within a couple of days of my arrival at the ashram I had a private audience with him. He was

charismatic indeed, but only knew a few words of English. Through a translator I told him that I

had come to have my meditation fixed. All attempts to meditate successfully in Australia hadfailed. Instead of settling down into a quiet state, Id become positively knotted up. He simply

said, Dont worry, everything will be fine.

A week passed, and I was meditating all alone in the meditation room, on a real tigers skin. All

of a sudden I was startled. Muktananda was standing over me. He stroked both cheeks, passed

his palm over my forehead, turned on his heels and left. It took all of five seconds. Well, I

thought that was wonderful. The guru had touched me and I knew that was supposed to be

auspicious. Nothing happened at first, but a week later I wasnt to be disappointed.

This one afternoon, while meditating all alone, a strange phenomenon began. Suddenly while

sitting, my body began to revolve in a circular motion. I thought to myself, How interesting. Id

stop it, and off it would go again. Up till this point whenever my body moved, it was I that moved

it. With each minute that passed this movement grew stronger and stronger. I was delighted. I

knew that I had received the awakening that Muktananda was distinguished for being able to

activatethe awakening of kundalinior the divine power within. All the while I was in a cool

state of mind, watching with fascination. No hypnosis, suggestion or hysteria was involved.

This was the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti, (Sanskrit language), known as the Serpent

Power in the Eastern spiritual tradition and given a supremely positive spin. It was said to be the

intelligent aspect of the life force itself, which lay asleep or dormant in potential until awakened

through the gurus grace. It was to be surrendered to or given over to, since it was the

spontaneous grace-driven means to Self-realizationa most attractive concept. In the fullness

of time one would be cleansed of all impurities that veiled the recognition of ones true identity

as being identical to the Supreme RealityBrahman or God.

Some days later a Canadian chap turned up. We decided to go and meditate together. As we

sat, he began to recite the famous Twenty-Third Psalm from the Bible: The Lord is my

Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leads me beside the

still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod

and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me allthe days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever

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. I remembered that from the light Christian enculturation during my schoolboy days. My being

deeply moved by its beauty, that second, the awakening that had begun a few days before,

exploded into ten times its power. I was flung to the floor and started crawling my way along,

growling like a lion, with the strength of ten men coursing through me. It was not as any ham

actor could do; it was devastatingly real. I was agog, watching it happen with amazement. I wasnot afraid. And I didnt resist it, since that wouldnt have been the idea. The poor Canadian

chap, as he told me later, had never seen anything like it. He commented that the nearest thing

hed seen to it was an LSD

drug freak-out; but this was something else! He was scared out of his wits and was trying to

settle down the situation by repeating the

mantra

, Guru Om, Guru Om, over and over out loud.

From that day on, whenever I gave over to the awakening, there was continuous spontaneous

activity. There were powerful breathing rhythms (pranayama), movement into classic dance

formations, vigorously executed yoga-like postures, utterances like the sound of different birds

so real sounding, speaking in an unknown language, weeping bitterly in one second then

laughing loudly in the next with nothing to weep or laugh about, cross-legged hopping across

the ground like a frog, juddering of the body, classical hand gestures (

mudras)

, the seeing of inner lights, journeys out of the body and innumerable other experiences. It

wasnt as though I was tuning in to some impulse to move in a certain way and going with it, as

in psychodrama. It just grabbed me in a powerful non-volitional or spontaneous manner andmoved me about. And there were moments of dynamic stillness. The predominantly physical

manifestations were called

kriyas

in the Sanskrit language. They were said to have a purifying effect, but as to why some of the

more bizarre manifestations took the form that they did only theories could be given.

All this was set into a typical Eastern framework of thinking. Muktananda would say, God

dwells within you as youthe inner Self or Brahman or God were identical. Spiritual practiceconsisted of faith in the guru as the Self-Realized master. It required surrender to his person

and to his instructions, singing chants in the ancient Sanskrit language to the gurus glory, and

devotional service. Its purpose was spiritual purification leading to the experience of ones own

divinity, called Self-realization or Enlightenment.

This particular path was called Siddha Yoga; the word Siddhameaning perfected being, and y

oga

meaning, yoked to God or the Supreme Reality. So this was the union with God that was totake place through the grace of the perfected Master.

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It sounded like an appealing truth. It was promising. It had an engine that moved things.

So I stayed on in the ashram for five and a half months, participating in the rigorous daily

routine. Wed arise at four in the morning for ninety minutes of meditation. If you were fortunate

enough to receive the awakening, youd surrender to its workings as a dispassionate witness.

If it had yet to stir in you, youd sit in formal meditation repeating the Gurus mantra, Soham

meaning, He I am or I am God, in the hope that it would happen soon. That was the

understanding in those days. However, instructions changed over the years. Then we took a

cup of chai; sweet spicy Indian tea. This was followed by ninety minutes of chanting the most

famous Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Then we were off into the beautiful gardens or

marble courtyard to do a couple of hours work, a form of devotional service to the Guru,followed by thirty minutes of chanting the mantra, Om Namah shivaya (meaning: I bow to

Shivaone of their names for the supreme God), before lunch. I called it Hindu army

chowsimple and delicious. Then there was a one-hour voluntary chant, followed by another

two hours of work, then a time called dharshan, when the guru would come out into a beautiful

marble court yard to be gazed upon or greeted, and then forty-five minutes of meditation before

dinner. Finally, a sixty-minute chant was sung before we collapsed into bed at nine at night.

Phew! Not a routine for the faint hearted. This went seven days a week, three-hundred and

sixty-five days a year. It was like something you might find in an eleventh century Benedictine

monastery.

This path of spirituality became my core spiritual practice for the next sixteen years. I returned

to India many times. I spent a total of four years in the country. But despite all the amazing

spiritual experiences, signs and wonders (many more of which are described in the book I

wrote, (called From Guru to God), including Nirvana (a complete but temporary annihilation of

identity and sense of self and the Hindu state of enlightenment called Turiya) my deepest

hopes for inner fulfillment remained unmet. The dynamism and apparent intelligence of the

awakening particularly, described above, drew me in and kept me hopeful for future

transformation. At the same time, I had been casting around for supplementary means to add tothis Eastern practice that might have opened a crack to the light I had been looking for.

So, in the seventies, eighties and nineties I did a number of the leading edge personal

development programs of the day: Landmark Education (once called EST, then Forum), a sort

of no nonsense pragmatic spiritual boot camp; and Silva Mind Control, a

get-down-into-low-brain-wave-process, heal people, throw open some doors of psychic

perception, and reprogram yourself for success, type of program. Then there was The Hoffman

Quadrinity Process, an expensive turbo-expunging of impeding parent-induced pastpsychological impressions. And then I studied and practiced A Course in Miracles (a book) a

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very well developed argument for spiritual transcendence, which I buried into for a year with

great discipline. I was intrigued by the observation; that though I understood and believed the

Courses content, I would continue to think, feel, act and perform as though Id never heard of it.

My friends on this Course had the same experience. I was starting to discover that the merely

mental or cognitive approach to transformation is impotent to do anything much.

I saw a gain here and there from a number of these courses. Whenever I was exposed to a new

perspective, information, data or technique, there would be a slight shift, just enough to lead to

an increase of interest. Then there would be a plateau, a falling off and then a whats next?

Within days there was always a leak-back to the old familiar self. This stuff wasnt delivering on

its promise. I wasnt a dilettante. I usually drilled down close to the bottom of these things,

enough to see whether I was dealing with iron pyrites (fools gold) or something more

substantial. My basic Siddha Yoga practice kept on as the mainstay.

In 1982 Swami Muktananda died. Shortly afterwards I became one of the ashram managers in

India and for one tour following this, I fell into the role as one of the international tour managers

of one of his two successors, the young Swami Nityananda. Months after I left this work a coup

took place. Gurumayi, his sister and co-successor ousted him for behavior unbecoming to a

guru. The whole affair unfolded like a palace intriguesomething like Shakespeare could have

written about.

At this time I was in New York and got a call from an Australian friend whod just landed a huge

Corporate Cultural Change contract with Australias second largest company, Telecom

Australia. He asked me Down Under, and together with a team of five others we put together a

broad range of personal and organizational development strategies designed to set Telecom up

for success in an emerging competitive telecommunications market place. It consisted of

facilitating the creation of a corporate Vision Statement, establishing Core Values, defining

Company Objectives and delivering a range of personal and organizational development

strategies, including Customer Service Orientation, Communication Skills, Negotiation Skills,Possibility Thinking, Goal Setting, Belief Engineering and so on. We believe it was the biggest

corporate program of its type undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere.

By now Id had a broad and deep experience of the Eastern Old Age movement out of India,

the pragmatic world of corporate consulting and the New Age personal development trainings.

Further, in 1988 and still a dedicated spiritual practitioner, I spotted this program called Avatar,

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created by a fellow called Harry Palmer. It was a belief management program, not dissimilar in

theory to what wed taught corporately. But this guy claimed that he had the techniques that

could really make the difference. Up till then I had found that core beliefs were not amenable to

change. This was a create your preferred reality programbeliefs are real forces; they

determine the way you think, feel, behave and perform; change your beliefs and thereby changeyour life!

So I jumped on a plane for Los Angeles and found myself in the home of Marilyn Ferguson,

author of the million-copy best seller book The Aquarian Conspiracy. She was a participant

along with me and nine others. It was an expensive course at two thousand dollars. It included

tea and biscuits but no meals or accommodation. It went for four or five days. How interesting;

one of the facilitators was Ingo Swann; a man Id heard had the most accurate strike rate

among psychics tested by Stanford University under controlled conditions. Hed been theirresearch subject for sixteen years and later worked twelve years for the United States Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) experimenting with Remote Viewing (visual perception beyond the

range of bodily senses) procedures. I got to know Ingo well and stayed with him in New York

City. He was teaching this course quite independently of his psychic abilities. Hes no longer

associated with Avatar.

The course was more powerful than most. I was sufficiently impressed to fly to New York, spend

another three thousand dollars for nine days of training so I could deliver the program underlicense.

I became one of the more successful teachers of Avatar around the world, delivering the

program in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, USA and Canada. Further to this, I

delivered my own program, the Decision Principle Training in France as well. It proposes

decision as the first principle of existence.

Palmers top Avatar course was called Wizards. Held over nine days and at seventy-five

hundred dollars, it promised the dominion of the gods. It didnt deliver.

But again, with all these courses, the substance wasnt to the level required. However

throughout all these years I kept meditating.

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By now, I had many years of experience, thousands of hours of meditation, charismatic

phenomena, study, and the company of spiritual luminaries. So I do believe my walk was

characterized by a considerable degree of discipline and application and all this wasnt too

much to cover over twenty eight years span.

By providence, I had arrived at the doorsteps of famous spiritual luminaries before most people

in the West had heard of them. To name only a few: Swami Muktananda, my guru, who later

became guru to famous singer John Denver; there was Osho, the famous or infamous Indian

guru, owner of ninety-three Rolls Royce motor cars, and founder of the Orange People who

made world news for themselves in Oregon. And Sathya Sai Baba, the guru with the largest

following in the world, who does mini miracles, is now confined to a wheel chair, is embroiled in

controversy and who claims to be an incarnation of God and the one who sent Jesus Christ to

earth two thousand years ago. Yes! Then there were the works and the company of theChristian and Islamic and Buddhist mystics such as the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa,

and so on.

Over the years I observed that people had different motives for following a guru or getting

involved in such groups. Some sought personal development or victory over personal

limitations. I was partially motivated by this. Some sought community; for others it was a life

style choice. Some wanted position and power. Others wanted to be loved. Yet others were

spiritual hedonists thirsting for the next experiential high. Being looked after was a priority forsome. And the search for meaning may have been high among the reasons. In most people,

motives were probably mixed, and not thoroughly reflected upon. Very few, I believe, went

looking for wheat that it might be divided from the chaff. What was of interest to me, was what

actually could make the difference, and more, what was actually true or false amidst all this?

The Buddha repudiated the teachings of the Hindu scriptures. Famous Hindu masters,

repudiated the Buddhas teaching, putting a dent in Buddhism on the Indian subcontinent from

which it never recovered. Without going into detail here, contradictions between teachingsabounded.

I noticed that many of my friends tended to swallow all they were told, hook, line and sinker,

without much reflective assessment. Often superstition had taken over. Truth mattered when it

came to balancing a checkbook, but in matters of spirituality, well, anything went.

With all this under my belt; exposure to luminaries, the spiritual experiences, and understanding

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Id developed, I still believed that breaking through the Gates of Heaven in a sustainable way

was possible. I took what I had been given in personal revelation and the best of what I had

been exposed to: the Muktananda awakening described earlier, (which, by some mystery, I

was able to powerfully transmit to others) and more. I put it all together calling it The Reality

Training, fully believing that this amalgam of practices would build the momentum forbreakthrough. My life had really become a serious experiment, with encounters and spiritual

experiences spurring me on. Perhaps I was like a bloodhound following a scent.

At this point I was beginning my day in Melbourne Australia, at four-thirty in the morning doing

sixty minutes of meditation, followed by thirty-minutes of contemplation, then forty minutes of

chanting the Guru Gitaa Sanskrit language text referring to the gurus teaching and glorious

virtues. Id end with forty-five minutes of surrendering to the spontaneous workings of the

awakening. From time to time, friends would knock on my door and join me for thisearly-morning vigil.

As though this werent enough, I decided to go into isolation. Since my late teens, I had thought

of this as an interesting experiment and had never had the chance to do it. Now was the time.

At the back of my home was a tiny apartment. I asked an accommodating friend to fashion

wooden panels to cover the windows and a trap door through which food could be passed. I

was sealed up in this way, and spent ten days in there. Great; I came out on a Monday and it

was as though, through new eyes, that the world sparkled. By Tuesday the old familiarperception had returned.

Seeing some potential here, I repeated the experiment some time later. On the second day a

remarkable event took place.

I was just settling myself onto a couch. I was in a completely ordinary state of mindnomeditation; nothing like that, and suddenly this happened: The image of Jesus Christ formed up

within my chest cavity. With this image came the conviction of who it was. One second

following, there was an experience beyond all words can tell. If I were to step it down into the

poverty of language; there was an openness and love coming from Jesus to me of cosmic

proportions and an invitation and a welcome, as if to say, Give me your life and breath and Ill

take care of you. Well, I was staggered, amazed, delighted all at once. The feature of this love

was that it was communicated to me to an ultimate degree. It was utterly real and personal, but I

didnt know how to respond. I was so committed and familiar with the Eastern oriented

understanding and practice that I kept doing precisely that. This encounter, however, I could

never forget.

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A year passed and Id gone to Berkeley, California, to conduct introductory programs for The

Reality Training Id created. Here a second significant event took place. What happened was

this: Over a three-day period, as if pressed into me from outside myself, came the convictionthat everything I had done, the thousands of hours of meditation, the realizations and spiritual

experiences, had all added up to a huge fat zero. It was a though a twenty-eight year

investment had tipped over. It felt as though Id been trying to draw water from an empty well.

Wow! I was sobered. Well, I thought, Ill just run plum ordinary now, become a regular

meat-and-potatoes guy, and live out my span and do what I can. Simple.

However, at the time I was doing a twenty-five minute drive in the car to Marin County near San

Francisco, each day. I kept catching these Evangelical preachers on the radio teaching thehistoric faith from the Bible. They were good speakers. It was a bit interesting and besides I was

interested in the five Great Traditions (unlike the cults), that had stood the test of

timeHinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. So, here was Christianity being

explained better than Id heard it before, at least the biblically oriented form of it. At first I was

noticing the similarities between elements of the Eastern and Christian teaching and

worldviews; then it became the differencesthat got my attention. Listening to the broadcasts

themselves, plus sending away for the tapes advertised on the radio over the next few months, I

must have put about one hundred and fifty hours of Christ-centric biblical information through

me.

With still no contact with followers of Christ I was now being educated to the first principles of

Christianity. I noted the claims Christ made for Himself; his claim to Diety, His purpose for

coming, what He accomplished by His resurrection from the dead, following His death on the

cross, where He took upon Himself all our sins that have eternally separated us from God. It

was His promises that drew me in first, however. Then there were the letters of Paul and Jesus

other disciples. All of this really got my attention. Thus, remembering my personal encounter

with Him, having been reduced to nothing, and therefore having nothing to lose, I resolved to

acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Yikes! Those words seemed uncomfortablyreligious to me at the time. Too bad, I was going ahead anyway.

This was going to be the most important decision Id ever made. I knew about decision: its

power, place and importance. Id taught my Decision Principle Training around the world. I

could have made the decision in my living room, but I wanted to make a marker of this one.

I still wasnt fully with Christ. Then I saw a billboard promoting Billy Graham coming to town. Id

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heard of himthe twentieth Centurys most famous evangelist. I thought he was dead. What a

perfect opportunity to make a decision in front of thousands of witnesses, I thought to myself.

This was September 1997. So with considerable anticipation I awaited the day of his arrival. At

the appointed hour I was one the first ones at the stadium and mounted the stands. He talked.

When he invited people down to make that decision for Christ, down I went and was so close to

the podium that I could have reached up and almost polished his shoes. When the moment

came to decide, I made that decision, surely, definitely, no turning back.

It was from that moment, I was never the same again. It happened silently, un-dramatically. I

knew what it meant to be born again, that strange phrase. Something new began in me thatmoment. A peace came over me that was back of feelings and experiences. With it, came new

meaning and purpose and above all there came a substantive change of heart and mind, which

had eluded me throughout all those years of experience, meditation practice and charismatic

phenomena. And this had come as a pure gift of the Grace of Christ independent of all my

efforts, disciplines or practice.

What do I mean by a change of heart and mind? Well, my temperament or disposition started to

soften and change, among other characteristics. I noticed it; my son noticed it. That was goodenough for me. The seeker had died. Id come to rest. Perhaps I could have used terms like that

in the past, but no, this was new coin. And the old Michael Graham would have said, Yes, I

know what you mean, and I would have had to reply, politely of course, No, you dont. You

see, I didnt know what I didnt know.

So, here I was having found my sufficiency in Christno supplementation required. In Him are

hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge

, as the Bible states.

And my attitude toward the concept of God significantly changed, was renewed and made

proper. And further, referring to Christ, the biblical text from the letter Paul wrote to the

Christians in Colosse struck me hard: He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over all

creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, things invisible and

visible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for

him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

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Ironically, it made sense to know and from the biblical text, that I was not God or the supreme

Self, even in essence (Hindu, Advaita Vedanta); or suchness devoid of self, self blown out as

in Nirvana (Buddhism), but a creature created by God in His image and likeness, built through

Christ for eternal relationship and union with Him. This seemed like a truth free of all vestiges of

cosmic narcissism.

And the Bible as a text came alive to me with a quality and a texture unlike other written works

of an intellectual or spiritual nature. It became to me like sweet milk and meat to the soul. This

didnt mean that I had to like everything it said. Nevertheless I believed it. The adjustment hadto be mine. I was no longer on the throne as arbiter of all truth. I had submitted myself to Christ

and the living Word. This was quite a leap, and as I came to observe later, becomes a mark of

someone who has enjoyed a genuine turnaround in Christ or conversion.

So here I was, reading the Bible with new eyes, spending time in prayer, listening to excellent

expository or explanatory preaching and enjoying church fellowship. What a change. This was a

U-turn that I would have never believed possible.

It was a radical turnarounda turnaround at the root and a most surprising one at that. Nothing

else but the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of the kundalini (earlier described), or the spirit of the guru,

could penetrate to the core of my ruin; a ruin that I believe everyone shares. What was the fruit

of Christs Grace? Resta rest pertaining to my existence, most assuredly superior to passing

minutes of stillness or peace I may have experienced in meditation.

I came to appreciate, that this new life found through the person of Christ, was what Jesus

wanted for everyone, irrespective of race or religion. And it was far more than being limited to a

how nice for me, or a how nice for you, story. It was a uniqueand

eternal boon available to everyone who turns to and genuinely puts personal confidence in

Jesus Christ.

So, today I walk on in gratitude. With a thorough basis for comparison I cannot but hold to the

preeminence and supremacy of Jesus Christ, His Grace and the super-abundant sense of lifeHe imparted to me, beginning when I emphatically turned to Him that day, in lasting trust.

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And yes, His promises and declarations had captivated me: He said, apart from me you can

do nothing and that had

become very clear to me, and Come to

me all those who are weary and heavily laden and I will give you rest

. And then,

I am the Way, Truth and the Life

;

I am the light of the world

, and

I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.

And more,

Whoever drinks the water I shall give him, willbecome in him a fountain of water springing up to Eternal Life

. He also declared,

I am the Alpha and Omega

,

the beginning and the end, the first and the last

. Further, he said,

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any

man hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and he

with me.

His invitation beckoned me. Perhaps it did to you. The general God word was big in those

days, as it is today, yet Jesus Christ pointed to Himself as having a specialsaving relationship

to the world. It became clear to me, as I had combed these notions thoroughly before, that He

wasnt speaking as the popular New Age concept of the Christ Consciousness or as the

Christ Michael or any other contemporary, fashionable or mystic phantom. Rather, he revealed

himself to me as the once historic and now ever present eternal figure of Jesus Christ, who is

the same yesterday, today and forever.

Ive been around. Ive seen a lot. Finally I received this marvelous free gift of Grace by turning to

him, who, on the cross at Jerusalem, consumed in one cosmic act of sacrifice, everybreaking

thingsin and the karmas

I vaguely believed in, that separated me from God, both here and in Eternity?

This journey was not a light and fluffy one. It warranted my deep reflection. Its significanceextended to life, the mystery of death and beyond. So I wrote the book, titled, From Guru to

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Godan Experience of the Ultimate Truth in appreciation of and in gratitude to Jesus Christ

and His saving grace, hoping that others may be similarly inspired.

None of what I have described has put me into a Pollyanna world free of normal responsibilities

and concerns. But a value has been added to my life through His amazing grace, beyond what I

could have ever imagined. For since that day of decision, for which God gets all the credit, the

years that have followed, have taken me on a ride beyond the veil into the depths of The peace

that passes all

understanding,

and the

Truth that set me free.

Clearly, it is beyond the scope of this short account to trace out all the reasons for placing my

trust in Jesus Christ. But it is the story of how one man did so and thereby found inner peace.

Find the full story - Find the book on Amazon!

Related Articles:

>Story of the Buddhist Monk Named Jampel , by Michael Graham

> Encountering the Eternal Guru - The Story of a Young Sadhu, by Sadhu

Nityananda.

AFTER THOUGHTS

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By Michael GrahamTill now the worlds five Great Spiritual Traditions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam Judaism and

Christianity have had an enormous influence on the planetary culture and world thinking within

large and discrete geographical regions. As a general example: Christianity in Europe, Islam in

the Middle East, and Buddhism in much of South Asia and so on.

Thats changing. Todays trends indicate that we are headed for one worldinevitably. Some

see it as an ominous sign, others think of it favorably. Increasingly, people travel or immigrate

to far distant places, cross-cultural influences are growing and cultural boundaries are blurring.

Consequently all things are becoming available everywhere and new spiritual choices

abound.

Each of the Five Great Traditions makes a claim for itself. And each claim is at odds with the

claim of the other. These sometimes-squabbles have been over Truthwho are we, where

have we come from, why are we here, and where are we going and by what means can weknow the truth of it all? Its the story of the who, what, when, where, why and how of

existenceworldviews. The issue of what is true and what is false was of great significance to

the ancientsto prophets, to philosophers, to wise men and sages and so on, even up until

fairly modern times.

Then a funny thing happened, with the advent of a modern way of thinking called postmoder

nism(20).

Up until this time people wrestled with the issues of what was true or accurate, false or flawed;

for Truth was considered to be of vital importance in finding a way out of the misery of the

human condition. These considerations had implications for both here and in Eternity.

That wrestling accounted for much of the conflict (21) between and within religions: for

example, between Islam and Christianity, and Hinduism and Buddhism, there being in the latter

case, a serious conflict between the teachings of Shankaracharya, the most famous and

influential eighth-century Hindu guru, and the teachings of Gautama Buddha, such that

Buddhism was virtually wiped out of India over the next two centuries.

With the coming of postmodernism a curious split has entered peoples thinking. When it comes

to checking the accuracy of our bank account, or whether or not Bill has cheated on his wife,

Mary, it becomes a serious matter of true or false. In being real, truth matters, and people livetheir lives in the real, except when they begin to hyper-intellectualize.

Is it not strange then, that when it comes to matters of religious truth, people become highly

relativistic. All religious paths are valid and true depending on your preference; All roads

lead to the Rome. Does it not depend on what plane you get on? What you and I believe is

quite different, but we are both right. Or as a caricature pointing to the popular ascent of

feeling over reason, one may be heard saying or asking, Two plus two equals four; how do

you feel about that? Does it really matter how one feels about it?

Apart from some elements in the teachings of a couple of eighteenth-century and contemporaryIndian gurus, the last time this kind of postmodern thinking was influential was in Socrates

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day, two thousand four hundred years ago. Socrates loved truth and dug deeply to find it. At

the time he grappled philosophically with a group called Sophists who took truth or its absence

as a convenience in order to manipulate for gain.

It is true, that in all these matters of thought, we should not be bound by the linear and logicalalone. Our reality can extend beyond that. But is it not odd, that by observing all things

knowable in the universe that we can see, everything reacts and functions according to precise

physical laws and truths? Even in back of Quantum and Chaos theories, many scientist

postulate order and precision. Yet we dismiss the imperatives of this observation when it

comes to matters of spiritual significance.

Therefore, who or what has persuaded us, that when it comes to things spiritual, differences

dont matter and virtually anything goes? This style of thought is common among contemporary

spiritual seekers. Rightly or wrongly, Gautama Buddha, Shankaracharya and Jesus Christ

demonstrated that they would have had no time for such an understanding.

If one is educated in these matters, it is clear, that although all the Five Great Traditions share

many teachings and truths in common, at the level of their core declarations, they are not

marginally but radically different, and four of them hold very different worldviews.

Though limited by brevity, the information in this booklet offers some information that may be

helpful in thinking things through for oneself, and in deciding and acting in matters of spiritual

significance.

Sincerely, with respect and with every blessing for your spiritual journey,

- Michael Graham.

Documents

From Guru to God - the experience of ultimate truth.pdf